


You know that I'll forgive you just this once, twice, forever

by WishingStar



Series: Flare [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Well what else did you expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-16 17:32:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9282530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WishingStar/pseuds/WishingStar
Summary: Their bond was never quite the same, after Steve got the serum. Though it wasn't until after he found Bucky in Azzano that things really started to unravel.





	

**Author's Note:**

> And now, a few brief messages from your author:
> 
> 1) Since I don't say this nearly enough—thank you all SO MUCH for the comments and kudos. I know there are long dry spells between updates, but I still have every intention of taking the story through Civil War, and I think the biggest reason I haven't gotten discouraged is the wonderful response I get from you all with each new installment. :-)
> 
> 2) I decided to write these couple of scenes in flashback, then I completely forgot why. I was going to cram them into "But Whichever Way I Go" between chapters 1 and 2, so as to not mess up my planned Peter Gabriel naming scheme... then George Michael died and I got "Freedom" stuck in my head for two days. Long story short, if anyone has an opinion on where this piece should go—chronologically after Sarah's POV and before Peggy's, or in the middle of "But Whichever Way I Go," or right where it is, or somewhere else—let me know in the comments. Something else I haven't said but meant to: concrit is always welcome, on this piece or any other.
> 
> 3) My original vision for this series featured roughly half as much angst and twice as much Bucky as we've had so far. Sorry about that. This installment helps rectify the second issue, if not the first...

Sometimes Steve regrets lying to Dr. Erskine.

He'd worn gloves to the expo, same as Bucky, same as every day of their adult lives. Erskine had forgiven his stack of falsified enlistment forms—had praised his tenacity, in fact—but admiring tenacity was wholly different from admiring... _that_... so when Erskine looked meaningfully at his folded hands and said "May I assume you are still unbonded?" Steve had met his eyes and answered brazen as you please:

"Yes, sir."

Normally when people asked his status, Steve deflected. _Well, women aren't exactly lining up to dance with a guy they might step on._ He could spin that line out smooth as butter, with just the right hint of underlying bitterness, on account of how often he'd practiced it. But this was too important, he'd felt at the time, and subsequent events seemed to bear him out. If Erskine had guessed the truth, he would have cut Steve from the program. And if he'd been cut, would the man chosen in his place have made it to the front? Would Bucky and the other Commandos ever have been rescued? Or would Steve have died and found them already waiting, when the Red Skull bombed New York?

On the other hand, Erskine might have kept him, especially if he'd told the truth about having a soulmate but not about who it was. The man had strange ideas, and he'd seemed to prefer Steve to any other candidate. And if Steve had told him, there might have been some precaution they could take, to protect the bond from... whatever the serum did to it.

He didn't notice any effect inside the Vita-Ray pod, on account of the distracting sensation of his _actual bones_ being dissolved and lengthened and re-formed. But he'd stepped out of the capsule into a strange, disorienting silence, and had just enough time to wonder whether he'd made the worst mistake of his life.

Then a Hydra agent had shot Erskine and the whole frantic scrambling chase ensued, and it took almost an hour to realize he hadn't calmed down yet because Bucky was panicking in the back of his mind. _I'm fine,_ Steve thought back as emphatically as he could, _I'm here, I'm fine, I'm sorry_ even though bonds don't work like that—the only 'message' you can send is a strong emotion. But Bucky received something, thankfully, because his terror subsided in a spike of exasperation. Steve could practically hear him grumbling _what'd'you do this time, punk?_

And Steve thought—he couldn't exactly seek a medical opinion, but for a while, he _thought_ —they were fine. Something had happened in that capsule, yes. But something had happened to the rest of him, too. His body had gone through excruciating pain and come out remade, yet it still belonged to him. Likewise he and Bucky had gone through some sort of temporary blackout, but they still belonged to each other. Steve picked up Bucky's exhaustion, his frustration and boredom, hours of sheer terror, and homesickness in every waking moment. Unpleasant, all of it, but Steve counted it a blessing; it told him Bucky still lived.

And then Bucky got captured by Hydra.

~*~

_[1943]_

Steve had just boarded his first airplane, which would take him to London and from there to the front in Italy. He'd settled in his seat, listening to the girls reassure each other about the safety of crossing the ocean in a flying metal tube, when he was hit by what felt like a pickaxe to the back of his head.

"Steve? You all right, honey?" Doris asked, laying a hand on his shoulder as he jerked forward, wincing.

"Yeah. I'm fine. Just a headache." The pain had receded as quickly as it came, but Steve continued massaging the spot, reaching tentatively for Bucky. Fear and anger and a concerning amount of pain had been filtering through their bond for over a week now, and Steve had fretted and missed cues at first, but there was absolutely nothing he could do, and in the end it faded into so much white noise.

"I've got Aspirin if you need any," Joan offered from the seat behind his.

"Thanks, but I don't think—ow!" Steve bit back a word not fit to be uttered in the presence of ladies. When the stabbing pain eased a second time, he threw caution to the winds and grasped for Bucky's presence like a drowning man for a life-raft. Their bond—oh God—it sputtered like a bad wireless signal, giving up confused flashes—Bucky, hurting and scared out of his mind— _don't die, whatever's happening please don't die_ —Steve curled down in the seat and buried his head in both hands, as the girls quietly conferred about migraine remedies.

Steve stumbled onto European soil white as a sheet (so they told him), shaking and blinking back tears and his skull prickling with dull static. There was nothing else; no headache, and no resonance. Bucky must either be in some kind of coma or—and Steve would never forgive himself if this was the case—he might be in such excruciating pain that Steve's side of the bond was shorting out to spare him the worst of it.

The bond flickered in and out while Steve performed for a London audience. If he kept to the script, managed to hide the fact that he was literally half-out of his mind, then they'd take the show to Italy as planned, to entertain the troops, and Steve might be able to do something. So he smiled for London, he smiled for the troops. He learned what he needed to know.

The bond flickered, sometimes for hours at a time, and every reconnection brought with it a soul-wrenching cyclical volley of pain/terror/despair and Steve digging his nails into his palms and thinking desperately _I'm coming, Buck. Don't give up. I'm coming._ Then, like clockwork, three seconds of splitting headache would take it away again. When Steve infiltrated his first Hydra base, he went in blind, without even the hint of warmth that should have told him Bucky was close. But he hadn't felt anything like the gaping, bottomless-pit-beneath-your-feet sense of falling apart that people described when they lost a soulmate, so Bucky surely had to be—

There. Was that a whisper? _There!_

Bucky, strapped to a table, didn't pause his barely-audible repetition of name-rank-serial number; didn't seem to notice Steve's arrival at all. Steve planned to reach for the nearest restraint on Bucky's wrist, but the rest of him had other ideas, and without conscious choice he had his forehead pressed to Bucky's, slumping in relief as his touch re-opened the bond. Exhaustion flooded him, but Bucky lifted his head.

"Steve?"

"Yeah, it's me." Steve set to releasing Bucky's restraints. Bucky blinked owlishly, and the first beautiful thing Steve had seen since reaching the front was his smile of unadulterated joy. " _Steve._ "

"Come on, let's go."

Bucky got up, staggered, and leaned on him. His soul seemed worryingly distant. Steve remembers, afterward, how even in that moment he worried. He could sense Bucky, but only faintly, like they were still half a world apart and maybe half-asleep, rather than beside each other. Steve pressed their foreheads together again, bringing bare skin into contact, trying by force of will to embrace the nagging pains of sleep deprivation and malnutrition and a dozen half-healed wounds, offering himself in return. He couldn't grant Bucky strength in a literal sense, but sometimes just the feeling of it went a long way.

Something in Steve's mind, or his unfamiliar shape, must have cut through the haze in Bucky's brain, because he stiffened. "Steve, what the hell?"

"We'll talk later."

"We'll talk now! I was in the middle of the mess hall and you did _something_ —"

"Later! I'm fine. We're fine. You're injured. We're in the middle of a Nazi camp. Priorities, Buck!"

Bucky glowered. "We'll talk later."

A daring leap and a forced march later, while the men camped for the night, they stole some privacy in the dense woods. Bucky started the conversation by shoving Steve with both hands, which hadn't nearly the effect it used to. "Talk."

Better get it over with. Bucky might not have shoved with much force, but he resonated a brittle anger that told Steve he was restrained mostly by lack of physical strength. Even his anger felt muffled, which didn't help Steve's conscience.

"I volunteered for a medical procedure to make me fit for combat."

"A medical procedure? I thought you'd been _tortured._ Then I thought you'd either died or found some way to break the bond like you always—"

"What? No! Why would I—what?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because you only went along with it in the first place to save my life."

"Bucky, no!" This was bad. This was throw-out-the-rulebook bad. Bucky hadn't brought up this subject in years; Steve had thought they'd gotten past it. 

"Come on, Steve, you know it's true."

"No." Steve dropped to one knee and took Bucky's bare left hand in both his own. Bucky had more-or-less cleaned the dirt and dried blood from his skin, but that only made the needle-tracks up his wrist more prominent. He should wear Steve's military gloves back to base. Steve could do without.

"I was selfish, Buck, all right? I wanted everything, I lost track of what was important. That's all! You know how I feel about you." _Listen, Buck, listen to what I'm feeling now._

Bucky smiled a little ruefully, shaking his own head. He balled a fist like he didn't want Steve holding his hand, even through gloves. Steve held on anyway. Bucky didn't meet his eyes.

"You know what, Steve? I always told myself, it didn't matter that we couldn't get married. I said to myself, even if nobody else recognizes it, _we_ recognize it, that's what's important. We can count on each other, I thought. Anything that happens, we can handle it together. But that's not enough, is it? Because you don't know how to back down. Someone told you you could make a difference by signing up to be this—science experiment—and you couldn't say no, could you. It didn't matter what I would've said if I'd been there. It's not like we're _real_ soulmates and you need my consent for anything that would affect—"

"Consent? You _went to war!_ " Too late, Steve remembered to keep his voice down. He'd have to hope the dense foliage had muffled the words. He continued in a harsh whisper. "Where's my _consent_ to have you blown to bits, or shot, or taken prisoner and tortured while I sat at home and felt it happen?"

"You never once objected when I enlisted."

"Because it was the right thing. Just like what I did was the right thing."

Bucky's anger faltered, just a little. He'd said often enough that Steve's insistence on doing the Right Thing According to Steve was his best quality and his worst, at the same time. Steve, sensing an advantage, pried Bucky's fingers open and brought the palm to his face, nuzzling it. God, they'd barely touched in so long. And they needed to get back to camp, but... Steve pulled off one of his gloves to press Bucky's hand between his cheek and palm, chasing the rush of contact, skin-on-skin-on-skin.

"Look, I'm sorry I worried you. I would've avoided that if I could. But the procedure? I'd do that again in a heartbeat. I would. You'd still be on that table if I hadn't. I can't be sorry about saving your life."

Bucky sighed and flexed his fingers against Steve's cheek. His throat worked. "Quit it. I know what you're doing."

"Is it working?"

"No. It's manipulative and rude."

Steve kissed the pad of each finger, then the palm. Then he reached for Bucky's right hand. Bucky held it back, meeting Steve's eyes with a challenging gaze. Steve turned his left hand over and started kissing the backs of his knuckles. Then over again, pressing his lips to the inside of Bucky's wrist.

Bucky sighed and held out his right hand, palm-up, eyelids fluttering. " _Dammit,_ Rogers."

~*~

And here was Steve's second, even greater mistake: he kept pretending they were fine. The resonance between them remained muffled, heavy-feeling, like sound passing through water instead of air. But the war dampened everyone's spirits, didn't it? Maybe other soldiers with soulmates felt the same. Steve couldn't exactly take a survey.

As for the blackouts that had occurred when he'd received the serum and when Bucky had been tortured—well, he didn't know they were a _bad_ thing, right? They could've been meant as a strength. A defense mechanism. If one soulmate experienced debilitating pain, it made tactical sense for the other to protect himself. Steve wouldn't have asked for that particular side effect of the serum; he'd rather have borne Bucky's pain than run from it. But it didn't mean the serum had caused lasting damage to the bond.

It didn't mean the serum was... was _fixing_ Steve's soul by pushing Bucky out. He had no proof of that. There were other explanations.

And if Steve'd had a little more faith—in Bucky, in himself, in God to know what the hell He was doing with them—they might have faced it head-on. Might have finagled a look at Erskine's notes, for starters, and gotten some clues there. Might have enlisted Howard Stark's help; Lord knew Howard Stark had no leg to stand on when it came to judging a man's sex life. At the very least, Steve and Bucky could have tested their own limits, like in the early days. If the bond did short out to protect Steve from pain, and Steve had known it, maybe he could have mustered up the courage not to flinch. Could have watched Bucky fall without turning away, shutting down, feeling nothing when he hit the ground and nothing forever after.

 _Woulda coulda shoulda,_ Steve's mother used to sing-song, usually just before cuffing the back of his head. _Make it a will-can-shall, and then we'll talk._

Steve wonders what she would've said, if her own lack of courage had caused Steve's father's death.


End file.
